In this tutorial I will be looking at the procedure for creating the kind of smoke effect shown above. There are many kinds of techniques that artists use to create fiery explosions, smoke-based explosions or mixture of both fire and smoke-based explosions where fuel plays a vital role in that process.

With every development of the Fume FX software comes a new set of parameters that have taken the level of visual effects to new heights.

In my past couple of tutorials, I have focused on showing different kinds of explosion techniques and how they can be easily created without the aid of Maxscript or using multiple sets of different software along with Fume FX.

The most important things in explosions are the set of values that you put in Fume FX GUI and the particles that you're using. Fume FX has great support from the Particle Flow System (PFS), Thinking Particles and the 3ds Max Legacy Particle System for generating and simulating effects.

Also, Fume FX has a good level of compatibility with V-Ray and mental ray. And the most important thing that I like to mention is the time that Fume FX takes for rendering in V-Ray and mental ray.

Personally I haven't checked out if Fume FX supports Cebas Final Render or Maxwell render engine. But again, every rendering engine and affects application has their own pros and cons.

Anyway I think we should get back to this effect!

Step 1: Generating PFS (Particle Flow System)

This effect has been simulated via Particle Flow. Even a small number of particles can create a great effect. It's just the matter of tweaking a few settings. Follow these steps carefully to achieve this effect:

Hit 6 to open Particle Flow. Create a standard flow. Now remove Shape and Rotation from the local event.

Rename this event "PFS_MSE_Engine"

Now select your global event "PF Source 001", go to its parameters and make these changes:

(ID: 254818, pid: 0) Ninjabdou on Tue, 25 February 2014 12:23pm There's a problem with the files you provided, it seems that the 2010 file is actually a 2013; max2010 tells me "file save version 15000" :(

(ID: 254810, pid: 0) Ninjabdou on Tue, 25 February 2014 11:46am Thank you very much for this awesome tutorial